In highly competitive organizations, employees are under constant pressure to outperform their colleagues. At stake are the best assignments and limited promotion opportunities. But this “healthy competition” can create a brutal culture, and may hold you back from performing at your best. Instead of trying to outdo your competitors at work, consider collaborating with them. Exchange knowledge, ideas, and feedback so that you and others can learn from each other’s successes and failures. For example, if you got tough feedback about the way you handled a project, you might be tempted to keep it to yourself. But if you share with colleagues what you learned from the experience, they might reciprocate and share equally valuable information. Of course, opening up — and making yourself vulnerable — to competitors can be risky; you have to know who you can trust. But this kind of collaboration has much to offer you and your colleagues, not to mention the organization.

Adapted from “When It Pays to Collaborate with Competitors at Work,” by Daniel Reynolds and Doug Meyer

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